Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
A well-to-do husband who allows his wife to have affairs in order to avoid a divorce becomes a prime suspect in the disappearance of her lovers.
Deep Water is a glossy but uneven erotic thriller revival directed by Adrian Lyne. The plot, adapted from Patricia Highsmith's novel, has an intriguing premise built on jealousy, complicity, and suburban menace, but the screenplay struggles to build genuine tension or psychological depth, leaving the central dynamic feeling underdeveloped. Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas have real chemistry that elevates otherwise thin characterization, though neither is given enough to work with dramatically. Cinematography is competent and often attractive but rarely distinctive for this genre. As a neo-erotic thriller, it offered some novelty by reviving a largely dormant genre, but it doesn't bring a fresh enough vision to stand apart from its forebears, feeling more like a pale echo of Lyne's own earlier work. The ending is particularly weak — it deflates tension rather than resolving it satisfyingly, leaving the film feeling anticlimactic and inconsequential.